just completed 1 year with usa truck

I am going with USA.What were the good and the bads about them?

 

hey man, would that beT.M.C.? what do you think about boyd bros.?

 

you are the lucky one. after doing a regional run,consisting of small town driving and 600 miles a week. I quit. They kept my last ck. of 600 saying that when a driver quits they owe reimbursement for orientation. I got nothing but a line of b.s stay clear of these theives

 

stay aqway from these crooks trainers are not even able to get bad steer tires replaced. they will steal money from drivers. Hope they go down soon. Just take notice and remember you were warned

 

...and sometimes the Ugly.

I've been driving for USA Truck for 15 months now. I signed up through Driver Solutions and went to Arkansas State University at Newport for the CDL class. 4 weeks on a trainer truck (the last 3 weeks driving as a team), and I upgraded to solo driver. I believe I've posted both good and bad about USA Truck here before, so note that when I was posting good, things were going well and when I posted bad, I was having problems with them. Right now, I'm not having (many) problems with them. My biggest gripes at this point are all about equipment maintenance, though it would be nice if I could go 2 months without a single payroll error.

If you do go with USA Truck, here's my advice:

1. Stay on top of your pay. When you get a load assignment on the Qualcomm, write down the empty and loaded miles, and whether or not it's a HazMat load (they pay $0.03 extra per mile for HazMat loads). When you pick up that load and get a Pro number, write that down too. If you have to scale a load, keep the back copy of the scale ticket and note the pro number of the load. Fill out an expense voucher for every scale ticket. When you have to hire a lumper, you will get a Comcheck Express Code and fill out the Comcheck - make sure you also write that express code, amount, and tax ID of the lumper service in your notebook on the page for that load. That Comcheck will come out of your pay unless and until they get a copy of the lumper receipt and the expense voucher, so fill out expense vouchers properly for lumpers and scale tickets, and make sure you scan them with your bills, receipts and logs. When you get home, go to the mailbox, get your pay statements, and compare everything to what you wrote down about each load. There will be errors (nobody's perfect). Especially make sure you get reimbursed for your scale tickets. When you find errors, call payroll immediately. Keep calling until the error is fixed.

2. Stay on top of your truck's maintenance. If you have to put your truck in a company terminal shop for service or repair, do a full and complete pre-trip inspection just like back in CDL school when you get the truck back out of the shop. You will occasionally find major errors made by the mechanics (like the oil filler cap not replaced, bolts left out, etc). Insist on safe equipment. Breakdown has a blanket policy of not replacing a trailer tire anywhere but at a terminal, unless it is either an unpatchable flat or showing belts in a major way. Be aware of this. You can limp quite a ways on a flat trailer tire if it's an empty trailer and the tire hasn't thrown a gator - when the trailer has 44,000 pounds of paper in it and/or the tire is throwing chunks of tread all over the road, it's an entirely different matter. Be prepared to stand up to breakdown personnel when it comes to equipment safety - remember, it's *YOUR* butt that's gonna get sued or jailed if you drive a truck you know to be unsafe and someone gets killed as a result.

3. Run Legal. Do not violate any hours of service rules for any reason. Run your full 11 hours and stop for exactly 10 hours, if that's what it takes to get a load delivered on time, but do not extend your driving or cut your break time with "creative logging" to get a load where it's going on time.

4. Develop a rapport with your fleet manager. You want to work *with* your FM, not against him. I've heard horror stories about a few USA Truck fleet managers. Others are pretty good. I lucked out and got one who's pretty good. I have to stay on him to get him to follow through on things every now and then, but overall he's a pretty good guy, doesn't pressure me to run over hours, and keeps me fairly busy most of the time. (I currently have 1.25 hours left on my 70-hour rule, but I get back 11 hours at midnight, and the load I pick up at noon tomorrow in Stuttgart, AR delivers in Manassas, VA on Friday morning - just about right for a 63mph truck).

5. Try to deal with day shift dispatch when possible. Night shift tries, but they are managing about 3-4 times as many trucks as day shift (night shift is a skeleton crew, really). They are also very restricted as to what "command decisions" they can make.

6. Keep your truck out of the West Memphis, Van Buren, and Vandalia (Ohio) terminal shops if possible. Especially avoid West Memphis like the plague. Bethel PA, Shreveport LA, and Roanoke VA are the terminals that do the best work on trucks. Bethel is the best by far, though the driver amenities at Bethel are a cruel joke - a fair tradeoff, IMHO.

7. There will be times when you will get 3500+ miles per week. There will be times when you will be lucky to get 2000 miles per week. Save up during the former times so you can pay your bills during the latter times. Get XM radio and listen to Dave Ramsey on Channel 165 from 2-6pm Central (or get Sirius, don't know the show times on Sirius). Follow his "Baby Steps" regarding financial success. Even better, buy or borrow his book, "Total Money Makeover" - you'll be glad you did one day. Buy a small propane stove that uses the small cylinders, paper plates and bowls, plastic spoons and a small pot. Buy canned foods. Get an electric cooler and stock up on sandwich meat and bread. Buy your soda pop by the case at Wal-Mart. You can't afford to eat at the Flying J buffet every night - and besides, if you did, within a year you'd weigh 400+ pounds and have 150/100 blood pressure.

8. Be prepared to spend 4 weeks on the road to get 4 days at home. By 4 days, I don't mean you get home Friday evening and leave out Wednesday morning - I mean 96 hours from the time you drop off the last load 150 miles from home until you need to be back in the truck and ready to work. You will probably not be paid for the 150 miles you drove home, but you should be paid for the 120 miles you drive from home to get your next load.

9. Get a laptop and a good mapping program. I use MS Streets & Trips. It'll let you look at a map of an area and zoom in till you're looking at each block. It'll also help you figure out which interstates will be the quickest or shortest when you see two routes that look about the same length in the map book. The directions you get from dispatch are frequently directions they got from the airhead at the customer's reception desk who barely knows how to get from home to work and back without GPS.

10. Unless told not to in the Driver Notes section of a load assignment, call both your shipper and consignee to verify directions, load number and appointment times, and to find out if you are allowed to pick up and/or deliver early. If you have the hours to get somewhere early and can pick up or deliver early, do so. If you have plenty of time on a load and cannot deliver early, get close to your consignee as quick as you can, find a truck stop you can sit at until you go to deliver, and call the consignee again. They may have had another driver call and say he would be late, leaving you an opening to be worked in early. The quicker you can get loaded, the quicker you can be on your way to the consignee. The earlier you can deliver, the earlier you can get your next load. This practice can increase the number of miles you get, and by extension, the amount of money you make, by 10-20% easily. This applies to any trucking company.

Good luck, and best wishes!
jlanthripp (At the Pilot in Benton, AR).

 

wow jlanthripp what can i say awesome post!I just called USA yesterday to get hooked up with my trainer so i should be shipping out sometime this week.I will definitely keep all these valuable tips in mind while out on the road.

 

don't forget the can of mase for the over barren trainer, make sure he listens to you or hit him with it again.....while your stopped of course

 

Just had an offer from them at .31 cpm averaging 2200 mi per week, that's about 685 a week before taxes, even at a starting rate(that's what this is) I don't see how I could afford to take the job. And what about those weeks when you don't drive 2000 or more? Keep on fishing. drive55cat

 

is there any way to get more miles? i just submitted an app. to USA and would like to run more than 1500 miles a week.

 

Redbeard, I couldn't have said it better myself. You hit the nail right on the head. Everyone should follow your advice, it would make their jobs a lot easier!